A car turned into the street and its headlights exposed her briefly. When the glaring lights passed away from her she broke down and cried. Everything washed back to her distorted by nausea. Things had been accumulating so much in her lately that when she watched her husband undress at night, when she watched him dress in the mornings, when she listened to his sickening endearments, she wanted to scream and throw herself through the window. But as she remembered him banging on the door, remembered his threats, the way Omovo froze, the silence afterwards, a feeling of emptiness crept over her. Something about the musty spaces of the room had opened up all the other things she had been hiding from in her life. Another car turned into the street and she covered her face with her arms and cringed as if from an ugliness she couldn’t escape.
The moment passed. A Hausa-trader walked past, swaying with every bandy-legged step. Children raced round the corner. She heard the prostitutes calling to men in cracked voices:
‘Sweet time man.’
‘I’ll give you a quick sweet time.’
‘Where are you hurrying to, handsome man?’
Ifeyiwa edged from the shadows and stumbled into the street. Her legs were weak. She felt queasy and wet. She felt old in a bodiless way. Forcing herself on, she came to the dark patch of bushes where abandoned babies were reported to have been found, where people had been attacked and robbed, where women had been molested. She found the darkness there calming. She stood for a while and the wind blew through her hair. She heard a strange whimper from the bushes but she was not afraid. She moved towards the noise, parted the bushes, and saw nothing. People hurried past the dark patch, singing as they went. She remembered a song from school and sang it sadly to herself.
I’m working for my life
I’m working for my life
If anyone comes
And asks about me
Just tell them and say
I’m working for my life.
The song made her nostalgic for her brief schooldays. It filled her with indolent images of companionship, of church services, of wide open fields, the athletics season, and of her friends in their starched uniforms singing with smiles at the morning assemblies. The whimper sounded again. She stepped back and saw a flower on a stalk amongst the bushes. It looked black in the shadows. She plucked the flower, smelt it, and sneezed. It did not smell good at all. She laughed quietly to herself and went on. In the dull light that reached her from the kerosene lamps around she saw that the flower was diseased, streaked with browns, eaten by insects, and it was not black at all but a washed-out pink. She took it with her.
Startled by loud rustling behind her, she turned to find a little dog limping out of the bushes. Hanging up a broken paw, it limped towards the stall of a bean-cake seller. The dog made pathetic noises and attracted the attention of the woman whose stall it was. The woman cursed the dog’s ancestors and threw a spoonful of hot oil at its back. The dog howled and ran across the street, its head held low, its paw dangling. Some children who had been playing football and fighting amongst themselves noticed the dog. They laughed at its awkward movement. One of the kids, in an attempt to score a goal, missed the ball and kicked the dog. Ifeyiwa screamed. The dog was sent flying. It landed and rolled over like a grotesque football and began to utter plaintive sounds.
Ifeyiwa rushed to the dog. It still breathed. Its forefoot twitched. Ifeyiwa picked up the animal and found it was bleeding. She hurried away with the dog in her arms and the boys taunted her.
Without thinking she went into their room and put on the lights. Her husband was sitting on a chair. He was a solitary, pathetic figure. There was a half-empty bottle of ogogoro on the table. He had obviously been getting drunk, alone, in the dark. In a hoarse voice he said: ‘Put out the light. And get rid of that animal.’
His eyes were red. Apart from pouring himself another drink he made no motion. She put the light out and went into the corridor. As she went she noticed that the dog was breathing strangely and its tongue hung out.
The backyard was deserted. There were unwashed plates, babies’ potties, dirty buckets, everywhere. She laid the dog near the kitchen to rest. Then she took up a bucket with some water, went to the bathroom, and washed herself. She had to suffer the indignity of drying herself with a neighbour’s towel that hung on the mucus-covered zinc walls. Then she went back to the room.
The lights were on. Her husband stared through her as she stood at the doorway. His mouth was slack and his bared teeth were kola-nut stained. His eyes held the pain of dreadful knowledge. He tried to say something, but he shook his head and sighed. She watched him calmly. He stood up and sat down and then stood up again. He staggered to the window. He opened it and shut it. He seized his bottle by the neck and poured some ogogoro down his throat. The burning liquid ran down the stubble on his face. He grimaced and held his stomach.
She stood watching him carefully, her calm giving way to uncertainty. The more she looked at him the more clearly she saw him. Her pity made her see him, for an instant, as a man that was not entirely ugly. She saw the repressed and twisted goodness on his face, she saw beneath his gruffness and perceived the possibility that he had demons of his own. She knew so little about him, had wanted to know nothing about him. During the marriage ceremony, which had taken place in their village, she had barely looked at him, and had scarcely looked at him since. But for the first time in her married life she saw him as a man capable of being possessed by an inexpressible pain. The fact that he had not pounced on her so far made her feel a little more grateful, more respectful. It made her see his humanity, made her see him for once as one who didn’t just threaten her and beat her, didn’t just, without explanation, tear down her underpants and feel her roughly to ascertain whether she was wet from contact with another man.
She felt a mixture of kindness and coldness towards him. After what had happened when Tuwo last visited, she more than ever wanted to run away to her village. She had always been afraid she would do something dangerous. But as her wicked dreams ceased she became torn between what she knew and what she couldn’t know.
Her husband sat down again. He fretted. He tried to rock the straight-backed chair backwards and forwards like a child. Then he started to cry. It was the first time Ifeyiwa had seen him like that. Seen him so naked. She didn’t want to see something forbidden to the eyes of a wife. She began to play with the diseased flower. She heard her husband weeping and she wanted to scream and break valuable things just so that he could vent all his anger by beating her.
Suddenly he was silent. Then he said: ‘What is that you are playing with?’
Ifeyiwa started. The flower fell from her hands and gyrated to the floor. ‘A flower.’
‘Who gave you a flower?’
‘No one. It’s a dead flower. I plucked it from a bush.’
‘Who gave you a dead flower?’
She said nothing. His voice changed. ‘I said who gave you a dead flower?’
She remained silent.
‘Did that boy give it to you, eh?’
Silence.
‘I am talking to you. Did he give it to you?’
Her face became abstracted. He got up suddenly and stretched his hand towards her. Ifeyiwa ducked, thinking that he was about to hit her. But he wasn’t. He reached for his coat hanging by a nail on the door. Then he struggled into the coat with great drunken difficulty.
‘I’m taking you somewhere,’ he said
She looked at him quizzically. The pathos had returned to his face. His mind seemed out of synchrony with his movements. His mouth flopped open, and his forehead creased. He looked at her with sly eyes. A curious lecherous expression contorted his mouth. He staggered over to her and with a perverse look in his eyes he grabbed her, his arms trembling, and attempted to kiss her. His breath repulsed her and she recoiled from him. Obscenely, he kissed the air. He held onto her roughly and squeezed her buttocks.
‘You’re wounding me,’ she said, coldly, gently.
&nb
sp; He stopped. Then he grabbed her again and, breathing horribly, squeezed her hard. The only sign of the pain she felt was in the contorting of her face. She pushed him away. He fell on the bed. He stood up, his face suddenly resolute. He went to the door and said:
‘Come. I’m taking you somewhere.’
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere.’
For the first time that night she was afraid. She had an image of unexplained bodies in dark places. He came and seized her hand and pushed her out into the night. He put out the lights and locked the door. Then he pushed her down the street. She was scared, but she couldn’t refuse to do his bidding.
He took her on a friend’s motorcycle. He rode slowly and with extreme caution down the Badagry express road. They went past the Alaba market and turned off towards Ajegunle. Then he slowed down near the army barracks, turned off onto a bushpath and rode deep into the thick forest.
It was dark. The silence was punctuated by the trilling of crickets and the syncopated croaking of frogs. It was very dark and Ifeyiwa felt overpowered by the smell of the earth and the herbaceous fragrance of undergrowth. Her husband told her to get down from the motorcycle and he hid it behind some bushes with the practised motions of one who has rehearsed his plan beforehand. Ifeyiwa was terrified to the point of stiffness. She saw dread everywhere. She saw masks and demons in the darkness. The palm trees weaved. The crickets seemed to trill louder. The croaking of frogs became unbearable. She heard strange whispers in the leaves and was dimly comforted to hear a car driving slowly down the road, its engine spluttering. When the car increased speed she lost heart. It occurred to her to run to the road and scream for help, and attempt to stop the passing car. But she knew that no one in their right mind, in a time so rife with armed robbers, would stop at a place like that even for a woman. It was too obvious a device. They would sooner run her over than stop.
‘Come here, you educated fool!’ her husband shouted somewhere in the darkness.
She didn’t move. She tried to locate his position. She waited, tense, like a trapped animal. He leapt on her from behind, held her, and pushed her up the path. She stumbled and he went on pushing her. She regained her balance and hurried on blindly ahead, the darkness like a wall constantly melting before her. Her heart pounded. Her eyes were wide open. Every sound in the dark made her tremble. She kept looking back and when they came to a clearing where light shone down from a distant top-floor window in the barracks she saw that her husband’s face had become impenetrable. The night had lent him a mask. His eyes were very bright. He kept opening and shutting his mouth.
When they got to the clearing he told her to stop. The moon came out. The clearing had stakes and sticks all about the place. She couldn’t tell if it was a discarded farm, a rubbish dump, or a ghetto graveyard.
‘Are you afraid?’ he asked in a quiet, murderous tone.
She said nothing.
‘Are you frightened?’
Still she said nothing.
‘I see. So you are not afraid?’
He brought out a pocket knife and flicked it open. It flashed terror through her and she stepped backwards. He caught her. She said, desperately, hurriedly, her eyes widening:
‘Yes, yes, I’m afraid.’
He chuckled. Then he laughed. Then he stopped.
‘What are you going to do to me?’ she asked.
His eyes were very bright. His hands trembled. He opened his mouth and shut it.
‘Do you want to kill me?’
Silence.
‘Do you want to stab me?’
‘What if I say yes?’
Silence. Then: ‘What are you waiting for? Should I take off my blouse? Do you want to stab my stomach or my breast or my neck?’
Silence.
‘Just tell me where you want to stick the knife and I’ll help you. I’m tired of this life anyway.’
More silence.
‘What are you waiting for? Do it quickly before I catch cold.’
His hands trembled pitifully. The wind stopped blowing. The crickets seemed to have a moment’s respite. The trees stopped swaying. The night became darker, the silence deeper.
The wind rose again. Ifeyiwa shivered. Her husband’s teeth chattered. Their clothes were whipped into a frenzy. The palm trees swayed like soft-limbed zombies in a nightmare. The frogs croaked persistently. In the darkness, his voice rising, her husband said:
‘I want to kill you. I do everything for you. I’ll do anything for you, and yet you treat me badly. You treat me as if I am a toad. I love you more than anything in the world, but I want to kill you. What haven’t I done for you, eh? I give you a roof over your head, I buy you clothes, I feed you, I work myself to death because of you, I protect you. Because of you I have to pay protection money to an organisation. And in spite of all this you don’t behave like my wife. You don’t like me touching you. After all this time you are not even pregnant.’
He paused. He played with the knife, drawing closer to her. His face became more definite the longer she stared at him. He was a complete stranger, his face a mask of bitterness and agony.
‘I don’t know what you do to your stomach. But the other day I looked through your things and saw some pills. Why don’t you want my child? Am I deformed? Am I that ugly? Am I a snake, a toad, a goat, a rat, eh? I am a man and I want children. I didn’t marry you only for decoration, you know. What wrong have I done you, eh? Is it because I am a bit old? Am I the first old man to marry a young wife? And anyway I am not that old, as you know. I can do it better than any young man, and for longer. Age is experience. Age is wisdom and power. Your trouble is that you have no humility, you’re too proud for your own good. Your people told me you were a nice girl, shy, well-behaved, respectful. I don’t see any of this. Your people asked a lot of money for you – I paid. I had an expensive wedding for you in the village. I brought you to the big city. Your people are wretched people, dying off one by one, and here you are making yanga, being proud, and only because you went to secondary school. Am I a snake, a toad, that you have to treat me like this? And to add insult to injury, today I saw you and that boy going into the room of a prostitute…’
He broke off. He made a strange loud noise. He opened and shut his mouth several times like a beached fish, like a man in the throes of lockjaw. Then he began to weep again. The tears glinted down his face. His body jerked spasmodically. Then he burst into a strange confession.
‘I’ve always been lonely,’ he said in a strangled voice. ‘Always fought alone. My father had nineteen children by five wives. My mother died when I was a child. My father grew to hate me. It was his wives who made him hate me. They were jealous because I was the eldest. I grew to hate my father back. His wives caused it all. It got so bad I used to run away from home. When they caught me and brought me back he whipped me till I pissed and shat on myself. I was ill for a week. I nearly died. He was a wicked man, a cruel man, confused, a failure. He couldn’t support his children and one by one we escaped from the village. Because I escaped first and set a bad example I hear that he cursed me. Of all my brothers I am the most backward, struggling like a madman every day of my life. I have done almost every kind of business. I have been a cement trader, a beggar, a farmer, clerk, lorry driver, a garri trader, and in none of them have I succeeded. The same bad luck followed me. When my father died I was happy. I thought my bad luck would end. I did not go home for his funeral. I sat here and got drunk. Since then things cleared up for me a little. I opened a shop. I was careful. I gave no credit. I became a hard man. I’ve got money now. Plenty of money. But I don’t let anybody know. I pretend I am poor. I live here in the ghetto, pretending, doing my business. Nobody stands in my way. I’ve learnt to survive by being ruthless and tough. But if you scratch me you will find I am a good man, a kind man, my blood is good, my spirit is good. If you stay with me longer, if you get to know me better, you will be surprised. But look at me. I look older than my age. You will be surprised how young I really
am...’
His voice trailed off. It became cold. The wind blew harder. Ifeyiwa kept shivering. Her husband wiped the tears from his face.
‘I am begging you. Begging you. Just tell me one thing...’
Ifeyiwa opened her mouth. It was dry. No sound came out.
‘Did he do it to you, did he? Did he do that thing to you, eh, did he?’
‘No.’
‘Answer me truthfully. I am a man. I can take it. Did he do it, did he do it to you?’
‘No.’
He did the strangest thing. He lunged at her with the knife. She jumped aside. He turned, started towards her, screamed an incoherent exclamation in his language, and then stopped. He stretched both hands and sent a searing cry up to the heavens. She had never heard such an animal cry before. It was scary. He was like a completely unbalanced actor, bungling his part, and playing out his deepest fevers.
‘All I want is for you to love me a little. A little. Love me like a wife, an ordinary wife, a dutiful wife. Give me a chance. Give me luck and children. Help me fight these battles, eh. Love me like a good wife. Don’t make me a laughing stock, don’t let me look like a fool in the eyes of this wicked world…’
His voice changed. ‘You must promise me now, here, that you will be a good wife, honourable, dutiful, and that you will never look at that boy again, never speak to him, never go to that compound, never write him letters, never think about him, and that you will stop taking those pills, and before this year runs out you will be pregnant for me...’
Ifeyiwa caught her breath. Her hands went to her breasts.
‘Or I will kill you here now.’
Ifeyiwa stepped backwards.
‘If you try to run you are finished.’